Top 100 Mary Ellen Quotes
#1. I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth, and Mary Ellen was proof that even in the Appalachian woods I would not be spared. It became evident that she was a rarity.
Bill Bryson
#2. Big voice, big heart - Mary Ellen Wessels is a pleasure to hear.
Fred Small
#3. So what is your star sign?' Said Mary Ellen 'Cunnilingus' Katz answered looking profoundly unhappy.
Bill Bryson
#4. A lot of times, when I go back to books I loved when I was young, I don't quite understand what it was that I loved about them. Rereading 'The Secret Garden,' I felt a lot like Mary feels when she visits her garden.
Ellen Potter
#6. a good recipe in the hands of a bad chef is still distasteful! A good chef must have a discriminating palate, and a good band director must have a discerning ear
Mary Ellen Cavitt
#7. I have come to feel that the essence of life is not what it so often seems to be - working to have, working to get, working to possess. It's about becoming. It's about what's happening inside us.
Mary Ellen Edmunds
#8. What I'm trying to do is make photographs that are universally understood ... that cross cultural lines. I want my photographs to be about the basic emotions and feelings that we all experience.
Mary Ellen Mark
#9. I'm not much for cats. I'm terrified of mice. I've worked a lot with elephants, and they are extremely intelligent and sensitive, and thankfully, they seem to like me. You never want to get on the bad side of an elephant. And never trust a chimp.
Mary Ellen Mark
#11. I really knew when I started photographing I wanted it to be a way of knowing different cultures, not just in other countries but in this country, too, and I knew I wanted to be a voyeur.
Mary Ellen Mark
#12. The greatest danger in any argument is that real issues often clouded by superficial ones, that momentary passions may obscure permanent realities.
Mary Ellen Chase
#13. If you are interested in photography because you love it and are obsessed with it, you must be self-motivated, a perfectionist, and relentless.
Mary Ellen Mark
#14. Your inner voice and the spiritual guidance...will lead you to your goal.
Mary Ellen Flora
#15. It is time to give ourselves to the Master and allow Him to lead us into fruitful fields where we can enrich a world filled with darkness and misery. Each of us, no matter who we are, no matter where we serve, must arise and make the most of each opportunity that comes.
Mary Ellen W. Smoot
#16. Suffering without understanding in this life is a heap worse than suffering when you have at least the grain of an idea what it's all for.
Mary Ellen Chase
#17. I love to fly. It's just you're alone, there's peace and quiet, nothing around you but clear blue sky. No one to hassle you. No one to tell you where to go or what to do. The only bad part about flying is having to come back down to the fuckin' world.
Mary Ellen Mark
#18. I realized all of the possibilities that could exist for me with my camera: all of the images that I could capture, all of the lives I could enter, all of the people I could meet and how much I could learn from them.
Mary Ellen Mark
#20. Everyone asks me how I get my subjects to open up to me. There's no formula to it. It's just a matter of who you are and how you talk to people - of being yourself.
Mary Ellen Mark
#22. If I hadn't become a photographer, I would have loved to become a doctor. I would have loved to have done something that actually helped people and changed their lives.
Mary Ellen Mark
#23. Everything was insanely alive, now you see it, now you don't. I thought, it's the light, it's the water, it's changing every second, it's always doing this whether I'm here to witness it or not.
Mary Ellen Hannibal
#24. I go into every story thinking I'm going to fail. I think about that all the time - I think it's going to be terrible. Every story is like the first I've ever done.
Mary Ellen Mark
#25. Usually my ideas for work have revolved around my interest in people, especially people that live on the edges of society.
Mary Ellen Mark
#26. I think the prom is very serious also. It's an American ritual, it's a rite of passage, and it's very much a part of this country.
Mary Ellen Mark
#27. I'm a documentary photographer. That's what I've always wanted to be; that's where my heart and soul is.
Mary Ellen Mark
#28. It's good that everyone has an opportunity to take pictures, the chance to be a photographer. Some are good, too. But the bad thing is that it's very, very difficult to take a great picture. Everyone can take a good picture - even a child - but it's hard to make a great one.
Mary Ellen Mark
#29. As a kid, I used to dream about airplanes before I ever flew in one. I really knew, when I started photographing, I wanted it to be a way of knowing different cultures, not just in other countries but in this country, too, and I knew I wanted to enter other lives. I knew I wanted to be a voyeur.
Mary Ellen Mark
#30. I want my photographs not only to be real but to portray the essence of my subjects also. In order to do that, you have to be patient.
Mary Ellen Mark
#32. During prom season, I travel around the country with a 20-by-24 camera - which is logistically complicated - and photograph proms. My husband made a film of it.
Mary Ellen Mark
#33. A plaque hanging on the wall of my home invites me to remember where I came from-each day. It reads, "No matter if a tree grows to more than a thousand feet in height, each leaf, each day, must return to its roots for nourishment."
Mary Ellen W. Smoot
#34. I'm interested in reality, and I'm interested in survival. I'm interested in people who aren't the lucky ones, who maybe have a tougher time surviving, and telling their story.
Mary Ellen Mark
#35. God accommodates [Moses'] complaints and makes in-course corrections. God does not take a human being so fully into the divine confidence--you might say, God does not depend on a human being so fully--until Mary conceives by the Holy Spirit. (pg. 16)
Ellen F. Davis
#36. When champions fail, they get back up and try again. They don't let failure discourage them.
Mary Ellen Clark
#37. I have an incredible relationship with dogs. I'm kind of a dog-whisperer.
Mary Ellen Mark
#38. I'm trying to please myself; certainly that's a big criterion ... though in a sense, I don't take images just for myself. I take images that I think other people will want to see. I don't take pictures to put in a box and hide them. I want as many people to see them as possible.
Mary Ellen Mark
#39. I'm just interested in people on the edges. I feel an affinity for people who haven't had the best breaks in society. I'm always on their side. I find them more human, maybe. What I want to do more than anything is acknowledge their existence.
Mary Ellen Mark
#40. Sometimes I work on film sets. I've done this for 40 years. I always wanted to photograph on the set of an Ingmar Bergman film. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity.
Mary Ellen Mark
#41. I've always been fascinated by twins. In my forty years of photographing, whenever there was an opportunity, I would take a picture of twins. I found the notion that two people could appear to look exactly alike very compelling.
Mary Ellen Mark
#42. There is no substitute for books in the life of a child. (1952)
Mary Ellen Chase
#43. Photograph the world as it is. Nothing's more interesting than reality.
Mary Ellen Mark
#44. Bringing up teenagers is like sweeping back ocean waves with a frazzled broom-the inundation of outside influences never stops. Whatever the lure-cars, easy money, cigarettes, drugs, booze, sex, crime-much that glitters along the shore has a thousand times the appeal of a parent's lecture.
Mary Ellen Snodgrass
#45. The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.
Mary Ellen Mark
#46. Television gives you the opportunity to create more of an ongoing camaraderie with everyone you're working with.
Mary Ellen Trainor
#47. I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul.
Mary Ellen Mark
#49. I'm not against digital photography. It's great for newspapers. And there are photographers doing great work digitally. When they use Photoshop as a darkroom tool, that's fine, too. But at this point of my life, after so many years, I don't really want to change, and I still love film.
Mary Ellen Mark
#50. I don't see how a woman in documentary photography could have children. I think it's a very difficult thing to do to raise a family, and I have enormous respect for people who do it. I'd hate to do something like that and not be good at it.
Mary Ellen Mark
#51. I was thinking about how fleeting and precious life is. Life is also arbitrary. For example, the choices that you make, the luck of being born into the right bed, to parents who support and help you and who love you. That doesn't always happen - and then, what happens when it doesn't?
Mary Ellen Mark
#52. I could spend my whole life photographing circuses. They combine everything I'm interested in - they're ironic, poetic, and corny at the same time. There's also something about a circus that's magical, sentimental, and almost tragic, like a Fellini film.
Mary Ellen Mark
#53. I don't like to photograph children as children. I like to see them as adults, as who they really are. I'm always looking for the side of who they might become.
Mary Ellen Mark
#54. Learning how to use different formats has made me a better photographer. When I started working in medium format, it made me a better 35 mm photographer. When I started working in 4x5, it made me a better medium-format photographer.
Mary Ellen Mark
#55. When you're working on a film, it's almost like photographing paintings at a museum. You're photographing somebody else's world. I just try and interpret it and make it real, and make it what the actors are about, what the director is about, and what the film is about.
Mary Ellen Mark
#56. Meditation leads you to your spiritual information, and takes you on a journey of getting to know yourself and your creations.
Mary Ellen Flora
#57. Never read anything that you wouldn't want to read out loud - - to your mother.
Mary Ellen Edmunds
#58. I'm a street photographer, but I'm interested in any ironic, whimsical images, and there's something very romantic about a circus.
Mary Ellen Mark
#59. I work in colour sometimes, but I guess the images I most connect to, historically speaking, are in black and white. I see more in black and white - I like the abstraction of it.
Mary Ellen Mark
#60. The sweet reward for preparation often does not come in the youthful twenties or staid thirties. It arrives - with accrued interest - in the mature years.
Mary Ellen Snodgrass
#61. I would die if I had to be confined. I don't want to feel that I'm missing out on experiencing as much as I can. For me, experiencing is knowing people all over the world and being able to photograph.
Mary Ellen Mark
#63. In the tide pool I was riveted by fat pink sea stars sitting like satisfied gangsters and seemingly unconcerned by their exposure; gulls would peck at them but the sea stars simply grew replacement limbs.
Mary Ellen Hannibal
#64. I was something of a problem kid. I was emotional, wild, rebellious at school. I'm very touched by kids who don't have advantages; they are much more interesting than kids who have everything. They have a lot of passion and emotion, such a strong will.
Mary Ellen Mark
#65. I wanted to travel from the beginning. As a kid, I used to dream about airplanes, before I ever flew in one.
Mary Ellen Mark
#66. One of my all-time favorite photographers is Irving Penn. I wish I could have watched him work.
Mary Ellen Mark
#67. Nowadays shots are created in post-production, on computers. It's not really photography.
Mary Ellen Mark
#68. Southerners have been known to stay over the Fourth and not get home before Thanksgiving. Some oldtimers take in overnight guests and keep them through three generations.
Mary Ellen Snodgrass
#69. I knew from the first moment I picked up a camera, on my first school assignment, what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was going to find a way to travel the world and tell the stories of the people I met through photographs.
Mary Ellen Mark
#70. I think you have to have a real point of view that's your own. You have to tell it your way. And, I think that it's a mistake to shoot for a specific magazine's point of view because it's never going to be as good. You have to shoot for yourself and photograph [ the way] you believe it..
Mary Ellen Mark
#71. Between the beach and the big breaking waves about a quarter mile off was a stretch of bumpy, glistening reef, its usual blanket of water pulled back by a celestial hand.
Mary Ellen Hannibal
#72. 'The Goonies' is the one that everyone either remembers themselves or their children are seeing now.
Mary Ellen Trainor
#73. If I'm in an unusual or extreme social environment, I always want to know what it's like to grow up there and experience it as normal, everyday life. And I want to know what sort of adults these children are going to turn into.
Mary Ellen Mark
#74. Say a Hail Mary for me. I could use some forgiveness.
Ellen Hopkins
#75. The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen.
Mary Ellen Mark
#76. I love dogs. I absolutely adore them. When I'm teaching in Mexico, I rescue dogs from the streets and make my students adopt them.
Mary Ellen Mark
#77. I'm staying with film, and with silver prints, and no Photoshop. That's the way I learned photography: You make your picture in the camera. Now, so much is made in the computer ... I'm not anti-digital; I just think, for me, film works better.
Mary Ellen Mark
#78. Looking at my own prom photograph reminds me of how significant that moment was - and how fleeting life is.
Mary Ellen Mark
#80. The shenanigans of the kids, on and off the screen, they all fell in love with each other.
Mary Ellen Trainor
#81. So when he asked about getting high, I didn't think, I agreed. We smoked some good California green. Took three tries to put me in the place he said I should be.
Ellen Hopkins
#82. To lovers of the long and intricate history of language the disuse and final death of certain words is a matter of regret. Yet every age bears witness to the inevitableness of such loss.
Mary Ellen Chase
#83. I think photography is closest to writing, not painting. It's closest to writing because you are using this machine to convey an idea. The image shouldn't need a caption; it should already convey an idea.
Mary Ellen Mark
#84. I don't like gimmicky pictures; I've always hated them. I like pictures that are very clear and clean, whether you're a great street photographer - somebody like Friedlander or Winogrand or Cartier-Bresson - or whether you're a portraitist, like Irving Penn.
Mary Ellen Mark
#85. In 1965, I was in Trabzon in eastern Turkey on a Fulbright scholarship. I would get up every morning and walk around the streets and look for photographs.
Mary Ellen Mark
#87. Was the human nature of the Son of Mary changed into the divine nature of the Son of God? No; the two natures were mysteriously blended in one person - the man Christ Jesus. In
Ellen G. White
#88. I saw that my camera gave me a sense of connection with others that I never had before. It allowed me to enter lives, satisfying a curiosity that was always there but that was never explored before.
Mary Ellen Mark
#89. Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.
Mary Ellen Chase
#90. I don't think you can develop or learn a way of seeing or a point of view. A way of seeing is who you are, how you think and how you create images. It is something that is inside of you. It's how you look at the world.
Mary Ellen Mark
#91. Manual labor to my father was not only good and decent for it's own sake but, as he was given to saying, it straightened out one's thoughts.
Mary Ellen Chase
#92. Of all the excellent teachers of college English whom I have known I have never discovered one who knew precisely what he was doing. Therein have lain their power and their charm.
Mary Ellen Chase
#93. It's not when you press the shutter, but why you press the shutter.
Mary Ellen Mark
#94. In every successful still photographic project that I have completed, there has always been a turning point in the story where I felt that perhaps I was working on something that could be very special.
Mary Ellen Mark
#95. Every photograph is the photographer's opinion about something. It's how they feel about something: what they think is horrible, tragic, funny.
Mary Ellen Mark
#96. I'm most interested in finding the strangeness and irony in reality. That's my forte.
Mary Ellen Mark
#97. I was always observing. Even while talking, living, going through every motion, I was watching myself and the situation. That's a writer. Always observing.
Mary Ellen Hannibal
#98. I remember the first time I went out on the street to shoot pictures. I was in downtown Philadelphia, and I just took a walk and started making contact with people and photographing them, and I thought, 'I love this. This is what I want to do forever.' There was never another question.
Mary Ellen Mark
#99. Whatever laudable qualities the English may possess in their selection, preparation, and consumption of food, elegance, originality, diversity, and imagination are not among them.
Mary Ellen Chase
#100. I love to photograph people in their own environment. It offers clues to what's important in their lives.
Mary Ellen Mark
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